


These Violent Delights Have Violent Ends

by tatertatra



Series: The Evil That Men Do Lives After Them [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Second Person, Self-Harm, Snoke is a predator, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-20 22:55:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14271327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatertatra/pseuds/tatertatra
Summary: They call you the Jedi Killer now. You take the name and strap it across your chest for the galaxy to see. It settles on you better than Skywalker or Solo ever did.





	These Violent Delights Have Violent Ends

**Author's Note:**

> CW: blood, violence, abuse, self-harm

There is something inside you that tangles. It’s a knot of noise and emotion and it snags against every sharp edge in your mind. 

You think often about what it would take to cut it out.

Cut it out, burn it out, reach into your very marrow and claw it out until your fingers bleed.   
  


* * *

 

You wish your parents would’ve hit you. It’s a strange thing to think, you’re sure. A strange thing to ask for but even as you float through space onboard the  _ Finalizer _ , you find yourself contemplating it. 

It would be easier to explain then, why there’s so much hurt and rage coiled up inside you. There’d be some proof, evidence made clear in bruises. You could pull back a sleeve to a stranger and show them the purple fingertip-shaped marks and then maybe, maybe you could get someone to care. 

_ I don’t want to talk. I want you to see. _

_ I want someone to blame so it feels like there’s a reason. _

But these things just happen. Luke had told you that. It’s the force and it wants to eat you whole, but these things just happen. 

There’s no bruises or wounds. 

You’re not even sure if it’s real now. Maybe you made everything up as an excuse for yourself. Your parents loved you, and wasn’t that supposed to be enough?    
  


* * *

 

You remember waking up afraid. 

There is something in your dreams that wants to take you. A shadow in your peripherals that drags  a gnarled hand across the glass of your bedroom window. 

Every night it would snatch you up and take you away from your family never to be seen again. 

You were old enough to wonder, in the darkest corners of your mind, why that would be such a bad thing anyway?

But it doesn’t matter because you startle awake, already sobbing and fighting for air. 

Your feet touch the floor before you can think better of it and you’re running across the apartment to your parents room. 

Their door hisses open, and combined with the sound of your crying, they shoot up in bed like they were the ones with terrors behind their eyelids. 

When they realize it’s just you though, they don’t even bother to get out of bed. Your father groans and flops back down with his back to you.

They’ve been through this one too many times. You know you deserve it though. 

Shame floods you so fast, your muscles tense. You suck in a shaky breath. “Mama, please—” 

Your mother, for all her love, is exhausted and enraged. “Go back to bed, Ben. I have to work in the morning.”

“But—”

“Bed,” she seethes. “Now.” 

Her words leave marks on the inside of your head. Rejection, as real and solid as a fist. 

You stand there long enough for her to shake her head and assume the same position as your father, turned away with the sheets tucked up to her ears. 

Your fingers worry across the hem of your nightshirt. The light cast into their room from the moon disappears behind a cloud, but you don’t turn to leave until you hear mother begin to snore. The sound disappears as the door slides shut behind you

You take your time going back to your room. 

You learned young, too young to be as angry as you are, that there’s always little acts of rebellion that relieve pressure inside you. 

You find a knife in the kitchen drawer and drag it across a datapad perched on the counter with the rest of your mother’s work things. The screen flickers behind the scratch. Then you throw the knife in the garbage, just because. A brief blip of satisfaction blooms in your gut, before being snuffed out by another wave of shame. 

You don’t feel  _ good _ , but you feel  _ better _ . 

Your family’s apartment is long and narrow, and standing at the garbage chute, you can see all the way down to your room. The shadows feel like they’re moving, like if you walk down the hallway they’ll swallow you.

There’s a small voice in the back of your head that questions if anyone would even care if the shadows did devour you whole. 

The even bigger voice doubts it. 

So you suck in a breath and slink back towards your room. 

You feel the hall closing in on you but you push forward anyway, hand clamped over your mouth to stifle the sound of your crying. Your whole head feels like it’s swimming in static. 

_ The force _ , your mother had called it.  _ You can learn to control it. Just breathe and it won’t be so loud.   _

But you aren’t sure. This thing pools in your ears and vibrates through your chest. It thumbs through your thoughts and plucks the worst ones to play on an endless loop. You’re not convinced there’s anything about this feeling that can be willed away. 

But still you endure, because you’re not sure how to do anything else. 

It seems like hours pass before you finally make it back to your room. You close your door in a hurry and dive under your covers. 

You listen for noise in the dark but there is just the infernal static that resonates from inside you. Nothing you can do about that. 

It’s when you bury your sticky face against your pillow that the thought bounces through your skull for the first time.

_ You will always be alone in this.  _

You brain snatches it up and puts it on repeat. 

Your nails dig into your scalp. It doesn’t take long though for the darkness to cradle you again and pull you under.

You fall into a restless sleep with the words cycling through your head. 

_ Alone.  _

_ Alone.  _

_ Alone. _

 

* * *

 

There is so much to be said about a name. 

A name can be an heirloom, or a burden, or a mask. 

You find every single one of your families’ names in old Imperial records. Not one of them is unremarkable, without legacy. 

Skywalker. Founded by slaves, born of the force itself. A prophesied name, whispered of the greatest Jedi that ever lived. A savior of the galaxy. A general and senator. 

Solo. A house of Coruscant that gave rise to a war hero and infamous smuggler.

Organa. The last royal house of Alderaan. You mother holds onto the memory of it like a thread through her heart.

Naberrie. Monarchs of Naboo.

Amidala, Kenobi, Tano, Calrissian. 

The list goes on and it’s a heavy thing to carry. 

You toss the datapad aside, feeling foolish for even bothering to look at all.

 

* * *

 

You don’t remember it of course, but when you were born, the whole galaxy held you aloft in such wonder, your parents thought they’d plucked a star from the heavens. 

A violent thing across the universe awakens with your birth. Even from light years away, its golden, rage-slit eyes find your small pink form. New and weak and squalling against the force. 

It grins as it smells your mighty Skywalker blood. 

 

* * *

 

They call you the Jedi Killer now. You take the name and strap it across your chest for the galaxy to see. It settles on you better than Skywalker or Solo ever did. 

Skywalker.

Solo.

It’s your first time out in the galaxy without the word  _ Jedi  _ hanging over you. It makes the air taste acrid, and you’re not quite sure what to do with yourself but you blink and you’re standing over a man, a foe. You don’t even know who he is or why he’s here but you were given an order by Snoke. 

Eradicate everyone at the temple, by any means necessary.  

He’s shaking and dying, staring up at you with pathetic eyes that plead for mercy. 

Your lightsaber crackles in your hand. His eyes flicker to it for a moment and you can see it plain on his face.  _ At least death will be swift, clean _ . 

Your fist tightens around it instinctively.

_ An elegant weapon for a more civilized age,  _ words passed on from your namesake by Luke. The weight of the memory rolls your stomach. 

There is something feral that snaps within you, a leash you suddenly break free from. You switch off the saber and let it fall to the ground. The absence of its noise is almost as deafening. There is nothing in your ears but the hum of your own blood and the ragged breaths of the man beneath you.

He thinks you’re going to let him die cleanly, but there is no mercy here.

You are not a Jedi, and you are not bound by those names anymore. 

When your knees hit the man’s chest, he lets out a strangled gasp that disappears against the noise in your head. 

The man’s nose cracks under your fist. 

Blood explodes everywhere, a sick, wet gurgle that bubbles up under your knuckles. You rear back and strike him again.

And again and again and again.

He scrambles for purchase beneath you, clawing at your arms and chest. His cries come out drowned. 

He finally goes limp and you’re still punching. There’s no structure left to his face, everything churned to a mess of indistinguishable gore.

Rook hauls you up. “That’s enough!”

Your fingers feel stiff and swollen. 

You finally come back to your body as you watch bits of the man’s blood drips from your hands. It felt good to make someone hurt, so you turn from Rook and retch into the dirt. 

 

* * *

 

_ I don’t want to be sad _ , you think.  _ I want to be angry.  _

Anger feels like fuel. Sadness is a weight that settles in your muscles. Sadness feels like atrophy. 

Your nails dig at the muscles on your stomach until you split open. 

 

* * *

 

Snoke smells of wet metal and decay, and the force is a black hole around him. When he touches you, the world goes silent. 

Like a breath. Like your heart stopping. 

His fingers trace the shape of your face, the slope of your cheek, the angle of your jaw, over the fullness of your mouth. 

“I’m disappointed in you, young Ren.” His thumb presses on the seam of your lips until your jaw hinges open. You taste him on your tongue. “I saved you, I’ve always been there for you. And this is your grand display of gratitude?”

You swallow around his finger. When you go to speak, his nail presses to puncture. Blood stains your teeth. 

“No,” he says. “No more words from you. No more excuses, you’ve nothing else for me.” He pulls his hand from your face and it feels like being swallowed by noise. “I just thought you were different.”

“I’m sorry!” You fall forward from your knees, braced against the cold black floor of the throne room on all fours. Your reflection is pathetic. Wild, sad eyes and stained lips that leak blood. “Supreme Leader, I just need your guidance. I failed you. I won’t do it again.”

He crosses the dais with his back to you, shaking his head. “No more.” 

“Please—”

He whirls on you and throws his hand out. You find yourself forced onto your back, a weight on your chest. A force wrapping around your throat. The edges of your vision begin to black out. 

“No more,” he bellows. “No more of your lies and manipulations!” The cracked bits of his face are etched in fury. “You think I don’t feel the longing in you? The fragile child still longing for their parents?” He laughs and spittle flies from his mouth. “They threw you away like garbage and I, your only hope, your only savior, plucked you from your melancholy. I gave you life where there was a shell. I gave you power where there was weakness.”

Just as you feel your body going slack, the weight removes itself and you choke on blood and air and spit. You’re staring up at the ceiling. Tears gather in the corners of your eyes. “You’re right. You’re right, I’m sorry.”

He studies you. You feel his gaze raking up your body sprawled, writhing, on the floor. A wide, rotten-toothed grin curls along his mouth. “Tell me you’re nothing.” 

The tears slip out as you blink, to wet your hair and your ears. “I’m nothing.”

“Again.”

“I’m nothing.”

“That’s right,” he coos. “You’re nothing. To your parents, to me, to the whole galaxy.” 

Snoke turns to the red-garbed guards and motions to you with a flick of his wrist. “Take this pathetic creature back to his chambers. Perhaps two weeks of isolation and fasting will teach him some gratitude.”

You sob. “Thank you, Supreme Leader.”

You can only feel relief as the Praetorian guards drag you from the throne room and away from the dais. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Writing Kylo Ren in second-person is terrible and delightful all at once. I can't lie though, I think this is the darkest thing I've ever written. I hope you all liked it regardless. <3  
> Much love to the betas, as always.  
> Comments and kudos much, much, much appreciated  
> Find me on tumblr and twitter @ tatraas


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